Ok, I'm just going to get this one out of the way since I just did Frost DKs. Tankadins, like Frost DKs, have seen somewhat more subtle changes to their gameplay than a lot of other specs (ooh boy, I haven't really looked into Blood yet, but there are some weird changes there.) Paladins will still work largely the same way, but let's look into the details:
A Reason for Crit and Multistrike:
Making DPS stats matter for tanks after they've gotten rid of Dodge and Parry has required a little mechanical gymnastics. Crit they went simple on - Criticial Strike Rating is now just also Parry Rating. More crit, more parries. So I guess avoidance stats haven't disappeared entirely. This applies to all tanks (except Druids, but I think they get other benefits from it.) Multistrike is somewhat weirder and more unique for Paladins. Essentially, you have a chance equal to your Multistrike to cause any heals that land on you to have an additional 30% heal effect. This includes Multis (I'm making it a thing!) themselves, though this effect is not officially a Multi itself, so you can't get an indeterminately long loop of heals. It does apply to your own self-heals, so if your Seal of Insight or Word of Glory Multis, you can effectively Multi off of your own Multi (I feel like there should be a GIF of Xzibit here, but I'll spare you guys.)
Holy Wrath - Bigger but Less Frequent
The damage on Holy Wrath is now higher, but the cool down has been increased. Holy Wrath is typically the last of your filler abilities you tend to use anyway (unless you need the stun or some snap-threat on a new pack of adds) so this shouldn't be the end of the world.
Convenience When Switching Specs
Just a very nice little thing here: When switching to protection spec, you'll automatically have Righteous Fury toggled on and you'll have Seal of Truth activated... which is funny, because I thought we were supposed to be using Insight? There was some talk about making the "heal on melee" thing just a Prot passive and divorcing it from Insight, but I think they took that back. Insight has a cool new animation when you select it.
Bonus Armor and Haste:
All tanks will be expected to find Bonus Armor wherever they can - though it will only show up on necklaces, rings, trinkets, cloaks, and shields. Bonus Armor will add flat amounts of attack power, while Mastery will increase attack power by a percentage, to let them fairly compete with the other stats, which are now both offensive and defensive. Our attunement is Haste, which shouldn't surprise you if you've been playing a Protadin in Mists.
Talents:
Empowering Seals:
Like with Ret, this is the Seal-twisting Talent. I don't know what masochist would choose this, but there it is. Prot will probably want to maintain all three, but particularly Insight, as it gives you a "heal for a percentage of your health every few seconds" buff.
Seraphim:
Again, like Ret, Seraphim costs all five Holy Power, and is essentially a short-term cool down that buffs all of your secondary stats while it's up. If you're good at timing around big boss abilities, this could be quite powerful, but certainly tricky to pull off effectively.
Holy Shield:
Yes, it's the glorious return of the ability that used to be at the core of Paladin tanking. Of course, it's actually quite different than its original incarnation or the abomination it became in Cataclysm. Holy Shield is now a passive that increases your block chance (the percentage keeps changing as they do tuning passes, but it's in the 15-20% area) and also allows you to block spells, which is pretty darn cool. It also causes your blocks to deal Holy damage to the attacker, which is really the thing I miss most about the old ability.
To take a brief walk down memory lane, back in the BC era (and spilling out a bit into Wrath,) the different tank classes had niches. Warriors were built from the ground up to be good at dealing with single, big powerful bosses, while Druids with their shapeshifting (and in BC you could play Feral as both Tank and DPS with the same talent choices) were great as off-tanks. The Paladin niche, however, was AoE tanking. They could take on giant swarms of enemies thanks to Consecration and Holy Shield. The reflective damage meant that once they had been lured in with Consecration, they'd stick to you like glue. In Cataclysm they basically cut all reflective damage from tanks because it was "too passive." Now, however, with tanks worrying more about keeping themselves alive than making sure they maximize threat, it makes sense to let us Paladins become the masters of the Holy Pain Zone once again.
You know, if that's the talent you choose.
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